Plausible Deniability
by LittleRedDog
Summary: Plausible deniability. Despite sounding like something to avoid stepping into at a dog park everybody wants it, even Jake Foley.
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: Plausible Deniability

AUTHOR: LittleRedDog

LENGTH: 1,727 words

SUMMARY: Plausible deniability. Despite sounding like something to avoid stepping in at a dog park, everybody wants it – even Jake Foley.

AUTHOR NOTES: I expanded the storyline and rewrote some of it to fall more in line with further research into NSA/CSS operations. The actual chain of command and job titles at SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) and IA (Information Assurance) are different so I stuck as close to canon as possible.

Be warned, it's a little dark. It was meant to explore some of the questions and possibilities raised in several of the fine J 2.0 stories already posted.

Re-edited 9-10-2008

The Ebenezer quote is from Charles Dickens' _Christmas Carol_, Copyright 1905.

DISCLAIMER: Jake 2.0 All rights belong to someone else. I'm just playing make-believe.

Excerpted from:

**THE SPY WHO REALLY LIKED ME **

**Written by: Mark Wilder**

**WARNER:** Jake Foley is another matter. Did you see the way he stood up to us? That's a soldier.

**SKERRIT:** You like him?

**WARNER:** Oh, my God, I hate and fear him, but a man like that, bent to your will, could accomplish anything.

**SKERRIT:** I don't believe he's bent to anyone's will.

**WARNER:** No, that's the problem. One I intend to rectify.

Thick, sandy hair, reflecting soft flaxen highlights. Straight nose sprinkled over with freckles. Brilliant blue eyes. Lips molded in a porpoise smile. A physical aura that attracted female and male alike. Even bathed in the cold blue radiance of the computer monitor the young man was handsome to the edge of beauty.

The attention of the young man, and of the tall woman standing tensely over his shoulder, was riveted on that computer monitor. The action displayed there was being sent through a remote video-conferencing camera.

Dressed in medical scrubs and caps, a woman and two men were moving equipment around a man restrained on a reclining gurney. The medical team's movements hinted that they were aware of the camera, even in deference to it. One of the men stepped away, revealing that he had been adjusting a thin metal apparatus that hooked under the subject's eyelids, preventing them from closing over the eyeball. A blue colored bite block was secured between the confined man's jaws; his hand nearest the camera rocked fitfully in its wrist strap, fingers splayed, making pushing motions, meeting only empty air.

"Hmm..." the young man purred. "Tied down and gagged, just the way I like them."

His companion's hand rested lightly on his shoulder. She turned her hand. The tip of a tapered, polished thumbnail traced the hairline up behind his ear, increasing pressure until he flinched.

"Kidding, kidding." He ducked, turning a teasing _little-boy-caught-doing-mischief_ expression up to her.

"No, you're not." She rebuked him with a thin, indulgent smile. She was well aware that, fed by his wealth--a wealth so secured that, as yet, even the best government agents hadn't found it all--his proclivities ran to self-indulgence and that how he took his pleasure wasn't limited by socially tolerated mores, by sexual orientation, or even same species as far as she knew.

"You are hoping this is a success, Kevin?" She moved a caressing fingertip along the thin, rough scar that started at the point of his jaw and stopped just short of the corner of his mouth; the only thing that marred the impelling physical perfection of the man. "You wouldn't be holding a grudge? That must be difficult to look at every morning when you shave."

"Executive Director Warner, I've worked very hard for this moment. I want Agent Jake Foley alive and working for the NSA..." he leaned into her touch, as would a cat asking to be stroked, "…for a long, long time."

Through lowered lashes he had an excellent view of the lacy fabric embracing the rounded forms that rose and fell under her thin camisole as she breathed. He'd have to thank Leon for cranking up the air conditioning when she was here. Maybe he would remind him he wasn't erasing his web page history from the cellblock's computer. Do everyone a favor. How was it even possible to find boring porn sites, anyway?

He knew the team in the med lab prepping Foley was anticipating seizures, doubling emergency protocols, covering all the bases, covering all their establishment butts. The test rats had seized. Well, what could they expect? How could you write comprehensive programming for rodents? The wisecrack was just to get a rise out of her, just to see if he could.

He always pushed. If he could push someone past mere words, threats, to the point of striking him; the actual physical act of crossing that personal boundary, then he had them, knew their weakness. Their emotions betrayed them all. Greed turned to envy, and envy turned to anger, and anger…anger could be turned to anything he wanted. Everybody was greedy for something.

Mark Benton, that sad little closet queen. A shrink worth his pretensions should have known to check his fantasies at the door. He'd worked the NSA's psychologist simply because he was bored with his prison routine. Until he'd realized that, through Doctor Benton, he had access to the entire NSA personnel's psychological evaluation files.

So easy to fulfill a heart's desire when it was known. He could make that happen. A flirtation, a no-strings-fully-funded research grant, a reassignment to field agent status, a coveted appointment, revenge on an ex-husband…if people insisted on being low-hanging fruit how could anyone blame a man for picking it? His eyes were drawn back to the monitor screen, fascinated, enjoying the mildly exciting tingle he felt as he watched.

She considered the man, body hunched in rapt attention to the screen. She'd seen men gaze at the televisions in sports bars in that same way. Possessed by the brutal entertainment; voyeurs and ersatz participants.

At every turn she wondered about the events that had put them on the same side. He, a sociopath who happened to be a brilliant software engineer. She, a director of national security for one of the most powerful countries in the world.

Kevin Gerald Flynn a.k.a., "DuMont". Odd, the timing that brought him to the agency's attention, more unfortunately for him, to Agent Foley's attention. This one had been caught with his hand in a federal cookie jar, the Fifth Federal Reserve Bank to be exact. He'd contrived to hijack and crash a corporate jet. Plotted an elaborate plan to escape incarceration. Nearly got away with crippling and stealing one of their research application projects; Agent Foley. And in every case Agent Jake Foley was the reason DuMont's wanton lifestyle was to be severely curtailed for many, many years. Convincing him to apply his talents to help the agency solve a problem hadn't been all that difficult, and if he needed to consider it a little payback, that didn't bother her.

For her, Jake Foley was an imminent disaster. A twist of fate and suddenly some boy scoutish computer support tech embodies a half billion dollars of her country's leading edge nanite technology. The human-molecular computer synergy had produced some impressive abilities; with the capacity for more to develop. That the asset would be used had never been in question. The NSA had agreed to utilize it by making Foley an agent, but what good was an asset if it couldn't be controlled? How long would it be before Foley's "conscience" put an operation in real peril? How could she trust her country's safety to a man whose attitude to his superiors was, in her opinion, insubordinate?

She believed that everything happened for a reason--could the answer to her problem be so simple a thing? Their mutual hatred of the man shown on the computer camera?

DuMont spoke and it startled her to find that she had been running her fingers gently through his hair.

"When they download my entire program into him he'll be perfectly tame. He'll follow his orders without question. Any orders." He glanced up again, watching her, shrewdness barely concealed, "I even slipped in a subroutine… . A gift, just for you." The small smile, so clever.

"What are you talking about?"

"Just thinking. When the nights get long…and I'm so far away. Haven't you ever wondered?" He nodded slightly toward the monitor. "I mean, the enhanced strength, the stamina, the healing; how the nanites would affect that in a certain area? And we both know you are a woman with…vigorous...needs."

"You're disgusting!"

He rolled his shoulders, a noncommittal gesture, looked back at the screen. The restrained man's hand movements had slowed. Only a lethargic curling of the fingers now.

"DuMont, I'll bet the serpent in the garden was you." Her voice was harsh.

He turned wide blue eyes at her, hurt evident. "Haven't I done everything you asked? The electromagnetic pulse wiped out his memories. The nanites will build the new neural paths and keep the old ones blocked. You've got your super agent. I've kept my promise. Now keep yours."

She had an overpowering urge to kick him, knock him right out of that chair. Wouldn't do any good. He'd whimper, apologize, and beg her to stay with him. If she did...the tears would dry as if they'd never been. He was duplicitous and treacherous. But you used the assets you had, to do the job that needed to be done.


	2. Chapter 2

--

* * *

The early, hot, muggy July morning hadn't penetrated the ground level parking garage of the National Security Agency's east coast complex. A few of the men standing in the loose circle still held their cups of cooling coffee. They wore muted suits, conservative ties, and the spirited camaraderie of all-knowing, long-suffering warriors. Most were agents whose pay grades rather than the need for the skill set demanded they be here. The result was a relaxed atmosphere closer to that of a school field trip than a spy training exercise.

That atmosphere died at the approach of a solitary figure. He came to stand among them and, although no one physically moved, they nonetheless drew away from him.

Satisfied that this completed the number of men he was waiting for, a man detached himself from the car he was leaning on. He stepped forward to address the group. Alonzo Hernandez projected an attitude that managed to be both friendly and authoritative. His short and round body had the sun-toasted skin tone of a Caribbean islander, a face permanently set in a cherub's humor. He was also one of the agency's best wheel artists.

"Now, you have all done this before, I know that." The cadence and flat sounding vowels made his words almost song-like. "Today we are going to do a run-through on a 'floating box' surveillance operation. The Agency wants everyone up to speed, now that all the equipment has the computer upgrades put in."

At those last words seven pairs of eyes shot furtive glances toward, and quickly away from, the last member to join the group. If that man noticed the glances it didn't show on the gentle, attentive face.

Hernandez had observed the subtle shunning attitude and he noted the new shift in the men. He checked on his sheet. That would be Agent Jake Foley. Foley. Name was familiar. Oh, right. That was the computer geek that SIGINT wanted to train into a field operative. The older men were probably resenting what they considered an unearned boost up the ladder.

He skimmed the man with a professional eye. Caucasian, early to mid twenties, tall, lightly built, brown hair (a bit too shaggy for his taste), brown eyes, pleasant appearance, but not strikingly so. Looked about as cunning and threatening as a part-time Sunday school teacher. Hernandez mentally approved. An unremarkable exterior is a good agent's best disguise.

There was a note to partner him with Maurice Kreisler. Put the new kid in harness with an experienced agent, not a bad idea.

He knew Murray. Nice wife, couple of kids. Out of the field now, running some low-level assets in the Middle East, if memory served. Thinning at the hairline and thickening at the middle, but the old boy still managed to pull off his suit and tie with a certain amount of style. Hernandez would bet he hadn't been out from behind his desk since the last refresher course.

He'd assign Foley to drive the chase car. Couldn't get in much trouble there.

Hernandez continued.

"I'll be watching the follow from the SatOps station to make sure the displays work. Harry and Bill, I want you leading. Remember you're the cheater car, not the target's hood ornament." He assigned the other men to the remaining three positions. The group broke up and sorted themselves into the waiting unmarked government-issue sedans.

Jake Foley silently took his seat behind the wheel, adjusted the legroom, and buckled his seatbelt. Murray Kreisler folded himself into the passenger's seat with the nervous, unhappy look of someone who has drawn the short straw in a virgin sacrifice lottery.

The four cars exited the garage together, but split up and arrived at staggered spots in a downtown warehouse district.

'The Target', in reality a NSA field operative, emerged from one of the buildings, got into a grey, late model four door, and proceeded to take a leisurely drive through the outskirts of town.

Hernandez's voice in the agents' earpieces intoned, "Target has exited the stakeout box."

The lead operative reported, "I have command of the target."

The surveillance team moved out. The grey sedan soon pulled out of traffic and nosed up an onramp for the interstate. The instructor's voice advised his team that the subject might be aware of their presence and to continue following it as a 'Hard Target'.

A mile into the interstate the hunting pack started to fall apart. The cheater car was cut out of the leading position by two pickup trucks that had abruptly changed lanes. The target immediately proved it was well aware of its retinue. Seizing the opportunity the driver decided to shake off the surveillance team. Darting through an opening, the sedan left the teams in the two outrider cars looking at empty pavement.

Murray spit out a curse and spoke into his mike, "Ops, this is the chase car. Target has pulled a rabbit. He is gone." Murray turned to his partner, intending to say, "Well, that one's in the wind." The glib words died away in his throat.

The older man was stunned to see the transformation of the young driver's face; the narrowed eyes and lips stretched tightly over bared teeth. The grinning face of a predator on a blood trail.

"Run, rabbit, run!" Jake growled, and tromped on the accelerator. The heavy car lunged forward as if it were a spurred horse.

Dodging a delivery van, Jake threw his speeding car in front of the right-side outrider car with less than a hand's breath between them. The driver stood on his brake and was rear-ended by a SUV that paid the price of following too closely. Metal smashed into metal. The aftermath of the collision was left behind, lost to the accelerating chase car.

Jake continued to weave through traffic, gaining on the target vehicle, ignoring the jumbled questions and curses screaming in his earwig. Murray, purple-faced, was demanding in strident, obscenity laced sputters, that if Jake didn't break off pursuit instantly he, Murray, was going to draw his weapon and shoot him.

Intent on his quarry, the young man slipped one hand over the steering wheel, rapping the speedometer sharply with a forefinger. Ninety-three miles per hour. Murray moaned.

The target vehicle was coursing, its driver confident of his ability to lose the pursuer.

Jake dropped into a line of fast moving tractor trailers, disappearing from the target's mirrors.

He veered onto the emergency pull-off lane. The rough surface vibrated the sedan. Murray, having run out of threats, and any hope of tasting the roasted chicken his wife was making for dinner, pressed back into his seat's upholstery.

Using the long trucks as cover, Jake steadily accelerated. Darting back into traffic in front of the leading semi he came up to the target's bumper on its blind side. Force and angle of impact calculated, he rushed at the fleeing vehicle, braced and tweaked the steering wheel. The sedan tagged the edge of the fleeing car's bumper.

The target car bumped forward violently. Slewing into a sideways skid, the car tipped, grinding out a thin line of sparks as the metal body scraped the pavement. Momentum hurled it spinning into the air. Centrifugal force flung small bits of automobile out in a deadly arc. The machine rotated three times. It landed, facing on-coming traffic, coming to rest against the inside barrier like a crushed beer can.

An air horn's frantic blast scorched the air. The screech of eighteen tires locking and loosing their grip on the road filled the chase car. The rearview mirror flashed an image of the open-eyed, open-mouthed horror on the rig driver's face as he leaned his full weight on horn and brakes.

The tractor trailer plowed into Jake's car. It bucked, skidding from the contact. Both agents' heads jolted back into their headrests. The car's trunk caved as the semi's front end smacked into it. The big rig jackknifed, riding the pavement as if it were a snow skier performing a stopping maneuver.

Jake fought the wheel, demanding escape speed from the careening automobile. The machine fought back. It swerved. It shrieked as it swept past a bridge abutment. Side panels shed metal against a concrete barrier; the peeled-back wreckage slashed rubber. A tire shredded. The vehicle wobbled, lurched, fish-tailed. Jake let the car skid off the pavement in a flat spin. Its wheels reached the berm, dug in, caught. The car edged onto its side, balanced for a fragile moment.

The car tipped over. It rolled down the shallow embankment to land right side up with a thunk; a ruined thing, huddled in the unmown grasses. Flotsam sharing the bottom of the gully: a few weathered fast-food bags, an ancient Styrofoam cup, a tattered Mylar balloon extolling "Happy Birthday" in faded and crinkled lettering; rocked gently as the car's arrival disturbed the air, then settled once more into stoic patience.

Out on the highway above traffic coming into the trail of twisted metal carnage halted with the sledgehammer percussions of a scene choreographed by a first-rate action movie director.

--oo—

Jake pushed himself off of the deflated airbag that draped his steering wheel and waited for the world to come back into focus. A post-smashup stillness blanketed the ditch. Small metallic pings and creaks broke the quiet as the vehicle settled into its new configuration. The stinging pressure on his knees told him the dash board had collapsed. He was probably pinned.

He probed the lacerated flesh inside his left cheek with his tongue, and then spat a mouthful of blood through the shattered driver's side window. Finger combing glass chips out of the dark hair that hung in disheveled strands across his forehead he spotted the ragged slash in the hand's palm. As he watched, the wound's edges pulled together, sealing in an accelerated healing process.

He looked over at his passenger. Murray hung bleeding and unconscious in his seatbelt harness. His airbag hadn't deployed. Jake acknowledged it with an indifferent thought, _Guess that's what happens if you disable it._

He said, very softly, and without a hint of regret, "Oops."

--


	3. Chapter 3

Jake didn't bother trying to open his eyes. He knew where he was. A hospital, no matter how hard it tried to be clean, smelled of humanity: hope, fear, love, despair, human. A research laboratory might have the warm smell of animals and cage litter, but it held nothing human. It was...devoid. A place of antiseptic, calculated cruelty.

That was where he was. As he couldn't feel his body, he was undoubtedly lying on a lab gurney in full restraints. And elephant chains if they were smart. He'd almost nailed that snotty blond assistant the last time they did this.

He'd been pumped full of Ketamine and Diaze..._whatza_ or Midazol..._whoza_--some pharmaceutical roofie strong enough to knock out the nanites. The lettering on the vial...umm...he had the drug's name on the tip of his mind--but it floated away. He was surprised his heart was beating. _They_ said it was to help with the reprogramming process. That assistant always looked down and said, "You'll be fine. You'll feel a little disoriented."

Liar!

Spending three days of Spring Break pounding back tequila Jell-O shots and waking up to find himself flat on his stomach, on blazing beach sand, buck naked, watching a girl's volleyball game; that was disoriented. This felt like being skinned and dragged across rock salt. The drugs didn't dull the pain; they simply short-circuited his ability to scream.

Those carbon nanotube transceivers. They weren't like the wired sensors that measured his vital signs, lubricated and held on with adhesive tape. These were on a platform the size of a pencil eraser, sitting on a carpet of tubes so tiny ten thousand of them were the diameter of a human hair. Wireless. The tech just pushed these against his scalp. Nineteen of them. After that he felt them, heard them; the tubes wiggling as they penetrated his skin, snuggling in like parasites. They must be the source of the pain, although he wasn't sure. Once the procedure started things got real muzzy. Brain-computer interface. Howdy Doody on a high wire…AMF.

An old memory from college drifted up. It came to him vividly each time he found himself here, triggered by the chemicals or the scrambled electrons in his head, maybe. The hot sun on his face, the concrete retaining wall he was leaning against poking his wallet into his hip. The girl.

Stephanie Walthrup. Lithe, long-legged, her shinning copper-red hair caught in a pony-tail that bounced over her shoulders. She had been expounding about some scientists who had severed the vocal cords of some research dogs, ostensibly so they didn't have to hear them crying while doing Heavens-Knew-What to them.

He had listened intently; enthusiastically supported her outrage. First, because it was right to abhor such behavior, and secondly...because Stephanie was a highly charged girl whose political passions often spilled over into personal passion. It was well documented by the other guys on campus that it was a good idea to be close to her when that happened.

In retrospect; he should have felt a more profound compassion for those pooches.

He wondered what the asshole had done this time. He imagined the activity over at SatOps; the deputy director, under the best of circumstances not a Sunshine 'n' Roses kinda guy, _walking the cat._ Meticulously going back through the history of whatever operation had blown up or which agent's actions had precipitated the disaster.

Dimes to donuts, considering where he was, the screw-up had been Agent Jake Foley, _The Other_ Jake Foley. Everything would come back to him when his head stopped floating.

Oh, the National Security Agency's directors thought they were being very clever. Breaking up the Nanite Special Operations team, sending Lou and Kyle and Diane to...well, Hell, he had no clue where they were.

But he knew what had happened to him. He got shanghaied.

Waking up in a bed...in some R and D outpost in Texas, as it turned out...torqued damn near blind with a migraine. With chills and sweats. He couldn't sit up without puking all over himself. Anything he managed to get down didn't stay down. By the second day he was pretty sure he was throwing up stuff he ate in high school.

It was hardest at night. Laying in the dark it was harder to get footing, to separate from the pain and dizziness. He couldn't rest. Overheard someone say, "No meds. The nanites need to be able to work unencumbered."

What the hell? First he's as high as a rock star groupie, then...not even a Tylenol? "Nanites. Work unencumbered?" What were they doing, growing another head? Oh, shit, they weren't. It sure felt like it. He reached up, fearful of what he might find: cautious that they would think he was trying to pull out the needles. They might tie him down then.

Slowly his fingers had explored, finding only what should be there, that's when he discovered they'd shaved his head. That's what did it. Stupid, stupid little thing. After trying to turn him into government property, making him question his own judgment, his own beliefs, who he could trust, making him live over that frickin' deli…a buzz cut sent him over the edge.

He started yelling and ripped out the IV. The first set of greens through the door got knocked on his ass. The second one got pushed into the bag stand. Then he got turned around, tripped over the first tech and threw up on the third one.

They decided to go with meds after all. Some top quality, Class A narcotics. Sweet.

When things started making sense again...there was _The Other._ The Other Jake Foley. The perfectly obedient, nanite-enhanced agent who walked in his skin, talked with his voice, and wasn't aware of him at all.

What was this creature? What did that make him? A spirit that hadn't moved on, haunting his own body? A conscience? At least Pinocchio heard Jiminy Cricket. He had no effect on this _Other _Jake Foley at all. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Jake would have been happy not to remember what _The Other_ had done. Amnesia would have been nice. A well timed blackout, perhaps. Split personalities didn't know about each other. No such luck. He was always the onlooker; a torture victim spread-eagled with his eyes taped open, powerless to do more than witness. While Agent Foley did whatever the Agency told him to do.

Mostly it was computer forensics: tracking money, arms, intelligence. His nanite hyped skills were phenomenal. If he put his mind to a task, there was hardly a data base on the planet that was safe from him. The nanites, however, were a powerful temptation and he suspected the Agency enjoyed playing with their new toy. They trained him diligently for field work. They didn't hesitate to use him. He was thankful they hadn't sent _The Other _to do any wet work.

He, Jake Foley, had killed people, but only to defend a life, not a choice. It had never felt like winning. Just a numb, sad emptiness that sucked at him. Under orders, to plan coldly, calculating to take a life? He had no idea what would happen if he were forced to go along for that ride.

No, so far the jackets he'd picked up required only a run-of-the-mill, scum-of-the-earth rat fink. He had betrayed whistleblowers that'd been cheeky enough to annoy some connected government contractor, bartered information with a genocidal dictator, smiled and helped whatever moral degenerate those higher up the policymaking food chain had decided was less degenerate than the degenerate they wanted hobbled.

Problem was _The Other's _lack of moral compass was a liability, always a chance it would slop over on a co-worker or a civilian. If it happened, when it happened, someone got the order to clean up after the party and send Jake Foley back to the lab for a clearing and reprogramming:_ Just clean up that mess and send the tux to the drycleaners._

It was a mystery to him why people who had no knowledge of the ramifications of their decisions kept being put in decision-making positions. You can't keep clearing a hard drive and shoving in new software. There is always data remanence; leftover files not erased but, not detectable by the operating system. Bits and pieces in limbo.

That might explain his presence. What had Ebenezer Scrooge said when he confronted the ghost of Jacob Marley?: "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato."

A human brain, even a nanite integrated brain, wasn't a hard drive. Hadn't anybody bothered to explain that to the mahatmas of this outfit? Hadn't anyone noticed this guy was beginning to wobble out of orbit with increasing frequency?

Of course, as long as Warner kept making her nocturnal visits to his dorm room he'd stay on the payroll. To his horror this _Other_ was a willing participant. He took pleasure in the physical abuse she doled out. The nanites healed._ The Other_ shrugged off bites and scratches. Even the cuts and bruises could pass for training marks by the time he was scheduled for lab tests. Nanites healed _The Other's_ physical damage; the mental damage was his and that was something they couldn't repair.

Even so, Jake couldn't believe no one had noticed what was going on. She couldn't have that much power. Maybe they just didn't care; maybe they felt he was getting what he deserved. Possibly they were right. He was a whore by anybody's definition.

No. That guy was not him. He had to separate _The Other_ Jake Foley creation from himself, from the real Jake.

His head ached. Someone was moaning. Oh, yeah. That would be him. He wondered how he could make a noise like that and not be aware of it. He was glad he was alone. It was bad enough he couldn't control the moaning, he didn't want anyone else to hear it. Or to see the tears that he could feel running coldly down into his hairline. Both, apparently, side effects of getting the shit kicked out of his brain.

It embarrassed him. It wouldn't have embarrassed _The Other_. That guy didn't give a rat's ass what anyone thought.

An idea came to him. More than an idea. An epiphany. For the longest time he'd been afraid. Afraid that one night he'd made a deal with the devil, lying there, exhausted, alone in the dark. Or that he had given up, had a psychotic break, that this whole thing was a delusion.

But, that wasn't what this was. Why hadn't it come to him sooner? No one knew there were two Jakes. No one knew about him at all. Warner certainly wasn't suspecting a third party with recollections of her visits. The only one who knew about him was the guy writing the frickin' software they were feeding the nanites. A guy whose code Jake knew, whose fingerprints were all over this nightmare.

DuMont.

Jake had to hand it to the guy though; designing programming to alter personality without screwing up the biological functions took a boat load of nards. On the other hand, DuMont wasn't the one whose body might suddenly forget how to process oxygen if something went wrong.

Jake had been responsible for locking that guy's sorry ass up twice. The first time, DuMont swore that his face would be the last thing Jake saw before dying. The second time, he was really pissed. Who, in all that was holy, thought it was a good idea to let this schmuck write programming for a nanite enhanced NSA agent named Jake Foley? DuMont must be having to sleep on his back.

He didn't know how he would manage it, but he'd find that little toad. When he did, he'd fricassee him over a slow fire.

He could get _The Other_ to do it if he could find a way to convey a command. There had to be a programming side-effect somewhere that he could exploit. There always was a side-effect. DuMont was good, but he wasn't perfect. No one was perfect.

Ants. Ants were crawling all over him, biting and stinging. He needed to move, to slap at them. He spent about ten seconds twitching against the straps before he reminded himself that there weren't any ants. The maddening sensation meant his nerves were coming back online. So he wasn't going into reprogramming, he was coming out.

Damn, that crap they gave him made his brain soggy. He was alone. There were always people in the room when he was being put under.

This was the only time he had any control; between the time the drugs wore off and someone came in to activate their little pet agent. Before _The Other _took back control. Yes, this would give him time to run the self-diagnostic subroutines, rummage around and look for some bad code.

Sometimes Frey and his lab monkeys went away and left him lying here for hours.


	4. Chapter 4

Miles Jennings hesitated with his hand raised. Staring at the office door of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service's executive director. The door wasn't what bothered him, but rather who was behind it. He brushed off his reluctance and knocked. The NSA's general counsel had every right to be here. If that miserable operation caught undue attention it would be his office, and more specifically, his person, that would be answering to a congressional oversight board.

Typically he was called upon to answer to someone on the Hill complaining that the Intelligence Assurance branch had been trammeling the privacy interests of American citizens. Those he could handle, of course. He hadn't risen to his present office on dumb luck or family obligations, as some he could name.

It was rare that he had to ride herd on the Signals Intelligence branch. The last time it was about an NSA agent getting tangled up with a rogue CIA agent who was attempting revenge on a Central American paramilitary leader. He'd been sent on a simple mission: eliminate the agent; retrieve the banned biological weapon she'd stolen from an U.S. government facility. It had spiraled out of control when their agent had gotten personally involved with her and followed her into a confrontation in the jungle.

Extracting the NSA agent had been difficult enough. During what should have been a routine internal disciplinary review that very same agent had threatened to e-mail the entire review file to the news services if they didn't rescue the CIA agent. Ransoming the woman had caused embarrassment to people who didn't like to be embarrassed.

Now, at the center of the mess he was going to have to face Warner over, was the same little son-of-a-bitch.

He was sure of his ground, sure of where her sympathies lay…amend that…until a singular evening a few weeks ago, he'd have been sure of her sympathies. It might be this subject would require the same adroit handling as a meeting between male and female Black Widow spiders. He had no intention of sharing the male spider's fate for a job well done.

The prim assistant rose, inviting him to wait while she announced his presence to her boss. Watching the humorless, stiffly held woman disappear into the inner office Jennings wondered, not for the first time, if this was what a minion looked like. Were executive directors allowed to have minions? Could executive secretaries be considered minions? His Gloria wouldn't be a minion. He couldn't imagine her helping him to drag a body out of his office. This one though… .

"Counselor Jennings." He almost jumped up. The woman stood in the inner doorway, "Director Warner will see you now." His eyes darted away from the mildly disapproving face; she couldn't possibly have known what he'd been thinking.

The woman waved him into a chair upholstered in a green patterned raw silk fabric. She turned smartly on the heels of her sensible shoes and closed the door behind her.

The chair sat on a sixty degree angle to the right front of Valerie Warner's desk. A deliberate placement that allowed the director the advantage of addressing the visitor directly, while requiring the visitor to either perch on the edge of the seat or twist their body to maintain eye contact. Jennings knew from somewhere that the chair he sat in was of the Neo Classical style, but he suspected it had been spirited away from some medieval dungeon for the specific purpose of making those who called upon the executive director as uncomfortable as possible. The woman continued to peruse the contents of a thick file jacket she held.

When enough time had passed to gently remind him of his place in the pecking order she closed the folder and dropped it onto the desk's softly polished surface.

Resting her chin on an interlaced tent of long, elegantly groomed fingers she addressed him in a cordial tone. "Miles, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today?"

The smile on the expertly painted face was not warm or welcoming. The smile could warm, soften, give no hint of the iron will lurking there. He'd often watched that smile draw people in; disarm them while its owner measured them, sought their real intentions, probed for an Achilles heel. It was like putting lipstick on a nuclear warhead.

"Ahh, well, we do need to address the matter of the incident yesterday."

"Regrettable. The Public and Media Affairs Office is handling the news coverage for that."

"Regrettable? We have one dead agent and another in a coma. At the hands of one of our own! Al-Qaida sailing up the Potomac on the Titanic would have attracted less attention!"

He clamped his mouth shut. Willed his face smooth of emotion. Two sentences. The woman had him rattled in two sentences.

The woman leaned back slightly, her navy jacket accenting both the squared shoulders and the soft curves of her body. "Miles, this Agency has been charged with the duty of protecting all classified and sensitive information stored in or sent through American government equipment. We are allowed--we are commanded--to go to all lengths to make sure that threats are identified and that this government's systems remain impenetrable.

"We could have had this handled through another agency."

"I think the NSA/CSS is perfectly capable of keeping its own house clean, Miles. Or are you going to quote from Executive Order 12333 until both of us are so bored we forget why you came to see me?"

She regarded him with the firm confidence that reminded him why she was the one sitting behind this desk. Her classic sculptured features and up-swept blonde hair could almost make a man forget her unforgiving nature; unforgiving of anything and anyone not loyal to her nation's policymakers, not totally dedicated to honoring their decisions. He wouldn't have been surprised to find that her bath towels were embroidered with the words, "We are an instrument of our country's will."

Her voice held the chill of superior reasoning. "We neutralized two double agents. Agent Foley did what he was told to do."

"Agent Foley is another problem." He hoped he wasn't stepping off the path here. "He's starting to spook people. I've seen staff walk up six flights of stairs rather than get into an elevator with him. And, there are the rumors: he's a cyborg, he's a robot, he's a biological mutant. One of the lunchroom ladies thinks he's an alien from Alpha Centauri, for God's Sake."

"We both know what Agent Jake Foley is, Miles."

Yes, Jennings knew more about what Foley was than he was supposed to. There had been a copy of a security tape from a camera that ran in the apartment where Foley was quartered. Miles had seen the recording. He almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.

Warner pushed the folder on her desk toward him. Her attention centered on him. Light dustings of golden brown eye shadow heighten the color of her eyes.

"This is the preliminary report on the operation. The Agency has invested considerable resources in Agent Foley. As the officers of this agency it is our duty to make sure all of its assets are used to their fullest potential."

The counselor struggled to return her steady gaze. Was she waiting for him to smirk? Did she know he had seen the recording? She had once threatened to cut out his tongue over a much more modest transgression and in that moment he had felt physical danger. That damned recording had been seen by a number of people, shared in secret. But, here, in the bosom of covert actions, Eyes-Only and Need-To-Know, not secret enough. An officer in charge of night security in Foley's building had died in a brutal one car accident. All traces of the recording vanished. Now, no one with an IQ above a cauliflower would credit that such a recording could ever have existed.

He reached for the folder; relying on his years of working under pressure to keep his hands steady, his face dispassionate, while his mind deliberated what the woman might be thinking. Matt Pauling was the director of Information Assurance. The IA did a lot of snooping in security systems. Yes, if she suspected anything in-house she'd be looking at Pauling. The man barely had the political courtesy to stifle his opinions on the positions he felt women were best suited for, or how he felt about working with Warner.

Jennings was willing to accept that a woman rose to a position of power in a man's world by being able to plot moves like a champion chess player. That she would have to be smarter and quicker and just a little more ruthless than her most aggressive male competitor was understandable. It was also defensible to him that the men displaced or endangered by such a woman vented their impotence with slurs and innuendo.

The men within Valerie Warner's sphere of influence had named her "the Virgin Ice Queen"; made innumerable crude comments and suggestions on how to "fix her problem." Many evenings found Jennings settled in a private club commiserating with his colleagues over the comfort of gin and cigar smoke on just that subject. Obviously, sex hadn't blunted her drive; it was more like stropping a straight razor.

Jennings skimmed through the report, trying to ignore the hint of perspiration dampening his undershirt. Shortly, it would begin to wilt the finish of his new Italian dress shirt. He returned the folder to the woman's desk.

"I don't know. It might fly. Other than the conspiracy nuts, the general population will forget anything ever happened by the end of next week. The other departments know the drill. Kreisler had family; I'll make sure there's not any problem with the insurance. But, Valerie." Here he stopped to wet his lips. "Something has got to be done about Foley. I heard that there was a problem at the debriefing."

The elegant fingers sketched a dismissive gesture. "A small glitch in the programming. Most likely caused by blunt force trauma during the crash. He's in the lab with the Nanite-Bio Interface team. They have indicated that everything is fine."

Composed and in command she spoke, again, as the voice of reason.

"We knew going into this that his shelf life as an active agent was limited. So far, with very isolated exceptions, his work has been exemplary. Don't worry. When he can't be handled reliably in the field or SIGINT or IA, he still has extreme value to Research and Development. Dr. Frey has already provided us with several abstracts for research studies that don't require a cognizant subject."

He waited until he had drawn in two slow breaths, studying the wood grain patterns of the desk in front of him. "Fine. Send me a final report when you can and I'll sign off on it." On that note he made as graceful an exit as he could.

Jennings' psyche carried a lesson learned in childhood, growing up in the poorest part of an area abandoned to urban blight. A neighbor had a dog. A big, ugly brute the owner bragged over. One day the man gave an order that the dog didn't obey. The man hit the dog and the dog bit him. The man tied the dog to his porch and starved it and beat it. He made it plain to the neighborhood that he had plenty of ill will left over for any interfering do-gooder stupid enough to champion the beast. No one did. When one day the dog's emaciated carcass turned up on a heap of rotting trash in the alley behind the man's house no one spoke a word. The inevitable was the inevitable.

He hadn't liked Jake Foley from their first meeting anyway. Where did that sanctimonious twit get off thinking he could blackmail the officers of the NSA and get away with it? Dumb and arrogant. That dog bit the wrong hand. If Warner wanted to tie her dog to her porch he wasn't going to step up. Agent Foley was on his own.

Striding briskly down the hall Jennings made a mental note to himself, he needed to establish some deniability. Warner could probably keep this freak show on the rails but, if not…he was going to have to make sure the blowback didn't land on him.

--

The soft, rhythmic sounds of the machines monitoring his vital signs hid the quiet hiss as the transparent armor clad laboratory door slid open. A measured tap of high-heels, the scent of an expensive perfume and the touch of body heat that brushed his bare arm broke Jake's concentration. He'd had something. Just an edge, but something he could use.

"No. No. You, go away! I need more time!" He raged in silence. All the more desperate for its futility.

"Agent Foley, how are you? Are you ready to go to work?"

The words came out smoothly. Without his consent. "Hello, Director Warner. I'm fine, thank you. Yes, I am ready to go to work."


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

--

She was sleeping. Stretched full length and turned toward him, close, touching, soft. Her arm lay over him, hand resting on the top of his left hip in a nearly weightless caress, her breathing deep and slow. The warmth of her skin on his was creating a sensual jumble of comfort and excitement, spreading through him, easing an ache he hadn't known he'd had until it was gone. Mild tropical night air wafted through the open window evaporating the dampness from their bodies. It filled the small room with the allure of rich cooking aromas and the sweetness of unfamiliar flowers. Guitar notes undulating the passionate sorrow of ranchera drifted in with the breeze, indicating the little bar on the ground floor of the hotel was still entertaining the turistas.

He couldn't remember having better sex. His muscles were sore in some very nice places. She really was double jointed. He was too, but. Wow.

Pulling off a successful operation, in an exotic country; and now, a beautiful stranger in his bed. This went way beyond any fantasy! Kyle wasn't going to believe this…he could hardly believe it.

It had been a true, genuine dry spell. Not that he'd made a Herculean effort in the romance department since the "nanite invasion." Truth was, he hadn't known what kind of--_or even if_--he could have relations with a woman; it took desperation on his part to broach the subject with Dr. Hughes. Then...when she handed him that paper cup… . He hadn't been that embarrassed since his dad took him aside for_ 'The Talk'_ when he was twelve.

Hoo-ah, though, this had been worth it!

She moved against him, murmuring something intimate and teasing, sliding a smooth, firm leg over him. Her hands reached for him. They were smooth and firm. And eager. Her fingertips traced over him; trails of tiny, hot tingles. He drew in a deep shuddering breath, focusing his night vision. He wanted to remember every detail of her ivory skin and white blonde hair.

_--Shift--_

Pale white beams of light stabbed randomly in his direction. Suddenly he was standing. In a tunnel, in the dark, in the cold. Shouting echoed. The sounds of boots scrabbling, coming fast, ricocheted off the metal pipes lining the rock walls. His night vision picked out two men running at him. Reaching, he pulled himself up until he was concealed among the pipes suspended from the low ceiling. When the men came in range he dropped down. The struggle was surprisingly short-lived. He had a brief rush of satisfaction; he was finally getting good at hand-to-hand.

Something bounced down the passage toward him. A grenade!

"No!"

He twisted around, sprinted away. Light and sound shook him, he stumbled, recovered, ran. Roaring heat billowed. Flames raced along the walls. His back was on fire. He ran. Inferno in his lungs. His face burned, he closed his eyes, gasping, no air.

His team waited at the end of this tunnel. And the truck. And the plane. And home. Too far. Too far for him. He would die before reaching the end of the tunnel. Gathering his remaining strength for a final attempt at escape—

He jumped.

_--Shift--_

He landed on his back, water closed over him. He came up, sputtering, to the good-natured jeers and cat calls of his two cousins.

"Whaddaya call that, Jake?" hollered Jerry from overhead. He ducked. The naked body of his baby brother, swinging from a rope knotted to an over-hanging branch, sailed through the air and cannonballed into the river beside him. He pulled back his arm to splash water into the three laughing faces when shrieks from the river bank caused all four boys to come to attention.

Three girls, the oldest just turned eleven, were leaping up and down, their hands full of t-shirts and shorts.

"Hey!" Four howled protests rose in chorus.

The girls squealed in mock fear and ran back up the path. The last one, his cousin, Katie, stopped, looked back; long tan arms and legs straight as she waved his jeans above her head like a pagan trophy then disappeared into the bushes with a flash of golden pigtails.

Prodded by the challenge, and the thought of trying to sneak back to Aunt Lil's without clothes, he shouted to the guys. "C'mon, we can catch 'em! They're only girls!"

Leaning horizontal he thrust out his right arm to stroke for the river bank.

_--Shift--_

He stood in the middle of a small raised arena under a bright light, aware of excited voices and a press of people moving in the darkness beyond the illumination. His right arm was extended, offering to shake the hand of the man standing in front of him. The man was sweaty, bloody, and massive, at least a head taller. The voices were screaming raucous encouragement, "Kill him, Mick! Rip his head off, Mick!"

The man, 'Mick', seized the offered hand, pulled him off-balance and drove a knee into his groin. The pain took his breath. He doubled over. A chop across the back flattened him. He was getting his face slammed into the floor. Nearly senseless, he couldn't make his body move. The brawler pulled him into a headlock. Folds of clothing trapping the stench of old sweat and previous victims' body fluids smothered him. He saw fireworks. His pulse roared in his ears. Having decided to take the crowd's suggestion; his opponent wasn't going to be satisfied with a win. The muscles clamped around his neck were ratcheting toward bone breaking pressure.

Self-preservation kicked in, he braced, the nanites took over. He surged up, tossing the man over his shoulder and into one of the ring's pillars. The brute staggered to his feet. Came at him swinging. Woozy from several days of little rest, less food, and the pounding he was taking, he couldn't retreat fast enough. A stunning blow to the jaw snapped his head back. He dropped, stopping with a shock when his knees hit the floor. Mick charged; alive with a fierce certainty of spilling blood. This time he was fast enough. He struck out, catching the fighter with a satisfying, nanite-enhanced body punch. He heard the man grunt, air heaved out of him. The floor bounced as the man toppled face down, finished.

A black man in a well-tailored suit came out of the darkness.

Watching the man walk toward him, dizzy, wary, and pumped up from his victory, he kept his hands tight, ready to fight this one, too.

Raking the fallen giant with a displeased glare the man turned the same expression to him. He stepped closer. "You just took down the best money-maker I had in my life," he growled, eyes flicking an assessing glance over him. "You need a job, Boy?" He asked, and then, turning a face-saving smile to the crowd, grabbed his hand and held it aloft.

_--Shift--_

He was lying on his back, looking up into fluorescent lights. A young blond man was holding his hand, pushing an intravenous needle into a vein. The transparent tube attached to the needle ran back behind his field of sight.

Blinking at the narrow face, sallow in the overhead fixture's unflattering glow, he finally placed him. Rizzo? Rodriguez? Rodriguez. Doctor Frey's assistant. Muted conversation was coming from the other side of the lab's closed door. Indistinct. A man and a woman.

"You'll be fine." He pulled his attention back to Rodriguez. "You'll feel disoriented for a minute." The assistant's gaze held on him only for a moment, his focus had moved to the next procedure before he'd finished speaking.

He knew he was supposed to remain calm, submit unemotionally to this process. Yet.

He felt an annoyance growing. Dry. No, more an anger. Hot. Growing. Itching. His fingers clenched and unclenched, shredding the pad under him. The needle pinched. It made him mad. It made him furious. The fluorescents' buzz; the sound grated under his scalp. The machines: clicks; hums; whines, so much noise. So much light. It seethed blood red through eyelids squeezed shut. His heart rate was jacking through the roof. Wide, white straps held his wrists and ankles to the exam table. Other straps ran over his chest and across his thighs. They held him in place. Rage boiled up, uncontrollable. The nanites galvanized nerves and muscles and the wrist restraints came loose with a gratifying ripping sound.

He had freed himself of everything but the ankle straps before the assistant could absorb the magnitude of his problem. Having empted a syringe into the IV line, he had turned and gaped. Looking like a fisherman who, thinking he was reeling in a bluegill, had found himself holding a Tiger shark.

This was wrong. This was bad. He knew he was disobeying orders. He should stop. A voice in his head was yelling for him to run, get away. He wasn't going to do either one. He was going to bring this place down. And everyone in it.

Several cabinets crashed to the floor, their contents smashing with the sweet chaos of metallic chimes and breaking glass. He yanked cables, sending a piece of bleating machinery into oblivion. As he turned to sweep a counter, he faltered, lost his balance. Grabbing at the counter for support he saw he was still attached to the IV. What had been in the syringe had begun its work.

Looking down he saw the assistant, cowering. Still gripped in frenzy, he snatched the man by the fronts of his lab coat, heaved the now whimpering wretch upright, and slammed him against a wall, suspending him there. The man reeked of fear. He'd soiled himself. Pestilent vermin.

He heard movement, grunts as weight hit him from behind. Arms and hands tore at him, pushing, pulling. He pushed back, trying to shake them off...began to lose his grip on his target…vision blurring...limbs suddenly too heavy. No. They weren't going to stop him. He was gonna have this guy's head on a plate. He balled up a fist, threw a straight right.

--

* * *

He was standing beside his bed, shaking, panting, his right arm buried to the wrist in the wallboard and concrete block over his headboard. Sweat slicked his body and soaked the waistband of his sleep pants.

The dreams withered beyond his conscious grasp, leaving him with the vague feeling he'd lost something important. He withdrew his fist, ignoring a familiar hot sting as the nanites hustled to heal the fractured knuckles and torn skin. Shaking out his hand he flopped down on the tangle of sheets.

_Great_, he thought,_ another disordered R.E.M. sleep. Frey is gonna love that._

This sleep disorder was neurological. A tiny structure at the base of the brain was supposed to shut off the neurons to the spine during a deep sleep cycle, temporarily paralyzing muscles so that the dreamer couldn't react to a nightmare by, say, punching a hole in his bedroom wall. If the nanites were preventing that the NSA needed to know about it.

He represented a big investment in nanite research and was, by extension, a valuable asset of the NSA. It was his duty to make sure the project was a success and to do this he must continue to function properly.

It never crossed his mind to conceal the incident.

But, he thought he'd keep quiet about the voice in his head. The shrinks in Psych already thought he was as crazy as a bat in a boom box. He was skidding by on his evaluations; someone up high was running interference. Someone was diddling his file. But, if they caught wind of little voices...he might end up in a padded cell...or a Petri dish. Property he might be, but in his opinion, of considerable more use to national security at a keyboard than in a Petri dish.

He'd nearly got his breathing back to normal when a sound on the other side of his apartment door brought him to his feet. A slight tingle running down his spine reinforced an ambiguous feeling. He was getting a visitor.

He knew the sounds of her jewelry, of her clothing, as it moved over her body, knew the tiny extra click in her heartbeat. He knew her. Idly, he wondered which handcuffs she'd brought. The rails on the metal ones chafed more, but she used a knife to cut off the plastic ones. Depending on her mood, a knife in her hand could give a man some anxious moments.

She never said, even from the first time, why she came to him. She never apologized for anything she did. It hadn't occurred to him to question her. He had asked if she wanted to get pregnant--more as a clarification of job description than curiosity. She broke his nose.

She was an NSA Director. He did not complain. He did decide he needed to apply the same depth of background knowledge to her as to the subjects of his Agency investigations.

He found the blips in her career: the miscarriage and ensuing divorce.

Digging deeper, into civilian files, he found the ex-husband. Happily remarried, two kids. Twenty-one months ago, the victim of an apparently random assault resulting in severe brain damage. It had happened before he joined the program. Nothing lead him to believe it was more than some poor fella's bad luck. Although he was more comfortable with absolutes. Luck, along with coincidence, divine intervention, and the kindness of strangers were concepts that his training and nature refused to believe in. What he did believe was that he had found someone of superior rank and determination that he would do well not to deny. That was an absolute.

It had evolved into a kind of game; a clash of wills with minimal ground rules. He would not refuse her, offering no resistance or retaliation, and he would never publicly indicate more than a professional knowledge of her. She would push intimidating mental and physical abuse as far as she could without incapacitating or killing him outright. Her emotional tricks, refined to feed on fears and self-doubts he didn't have, were useless weapons. Flesh healed. As long as he did what he was told she had no right to terminate him. He was government property.

Did she want him to beg, to plead for her to stop? Was that what he saw in her face, the need in her eyes, in those rare unshielded moments? If that was her goal it went out beyond his understanding. She had only to order him to say the words and he would. He followed orders, without hesitation, no matter what they were. That was his job. He did not question.

Nor did he beg...and he had a high endurance threshold.

So that was how it went, visit after visit. One sweating body pressed against another. She, pushing into the boundaries of pain and personal dignity; he, absorbing the insults, bent to her will, but unbroken. Cruelty could be a remarkable aphrodisiac, to the giver and the receiver.

At least with her he felt something. He never much felt anything.

The people he worked along side of seemed to enjoy being in a constant state of emotional upheaval: holidays, relationships, sickness, something their kids had done, whose car was parked where. That their contortions rarely changed anything didn't seem to matter. He recognized the emotions: pride, happiness, frustration, affection, even fear; he recognized them, understood them. He didn't feel them.

He'd tried. He'd aped the socially expected responses. He'd waited for the feelings to fill him as they did his coworkers. The feelings didn't come. Only a void. An increasing hollowness. He felt he was miming into a yawning abyss. With none of the steady, predictable logic of a good programming code their kaleidoscope emotions swirled past him like a parade he could only watch from the curb, an uninvolved bystander. His co-workers, seeming to sense his lack, simply preferred not to share his company.

Dropping his pretenses and focusing on his work, what he was good at, made it less distracting for him and made it easier on them. Their awkward silences, he could live with.

The Psych doctor kept yapping on about making a connection with "the human condition". You were alive or you were dead._ That_ was the human condition. The only people who warranted consideration were the ones who could alter that. At least he knew who you had to sleep with to get ahead in this place. Or keep your head.

The door swung quietly on its hinges. She had a key. The door lock was mechanical, not electronic; he couldn't have kept her out had he wanted to.

A small light clicked on in the living room. That was a concession she made to showing up without any notice. It amused him to think of it as a ten-second warning. Although he was always waiting, somehow knowing when she would come. He glanced over at the dark, fist-sized opening in the wall. Probably not a good idea to startle him out of a sound sleep.

Striding across the carpeted hall she stepped into the darkened bedroom, came to stand beside him, and dropping a soft-sided briefcase, switched on the bedside lamp. He didn't look at her.

She brushed him as she turned back to the nightstand. He knew her hands: manicured, supple, unerring, were lighting two candles; her head bowed to the ritual of the motions. The briefest flares of sound and light, a vapor of sulfides, confirmed her actions. A muscle across his stomach tightened. He stifled a pleasure/pain memory, would not waste energy on speculation, she'd use them or she wouldn't. A thought persisted, distracting him.

"Agent Foley?"

Her voice seemed softer than usual. He dropped his guard, fractionally.

"I don't have any photos. Family, friends. An old girlfriend. Not even a pet."

"That's why you were accepted for the program. No ties. Loner. Family hasn't contacted you since you left home for college." Her tone was calming, merely thin silk over a statement of hard, undeniable truth.

Nodding, he recited, "Father, Jonathon. Mother, Sharon. Younger brother, Jerry. Not even a Christmas card." The sentences were in his head as if he'd read them off a computer screen.

Things, people, left a trail when they moved. A blend of natural and applied scents unique to each individual. He could, within limits, track a person through the Agency's halls, separating that one distinctive odor among the many that flowed invisible to everyone else. Director Warner's scent pooled around her. The longer she stood beside him, the stronger, warmer, muskier it became. He breathed it in. Let it trigger a primary biological response.

She began to undress. Folding and placing each item on the dresser with deliberation, as though considering her strategy, preparing her movements.

"Memory is just so sketchy," he murmured. "Dr. Frey said it was my cortex reacting to the nanites. Some of the connections to old memories might be lost for a while...that they would come back eventually."

"And?" She stood, their faces almost touching. He thought he caught the muscles at the corners of her eyes tighten. Could have been the flicker of candlelight. "Has anything come back?"

"No."

"Probably just as well. There hasn't been a single outside inquiry about you since you entered the program. No one cares about you, but the NSA. Your work here is important to national security." The familiar sharp undertone had returned. "Remember that."

Subtle, she wasn't.

She bent gracefully and deftly scooped two items from her bag. They swung free with faint metallic clinks. "Lose the pants."

He hooked his thumbs under the damp material at his waist. Exhaling deeply, slowly, thinking it was better than lying on that bed trying to sleep. Waiting for the numbers on the clock to click over. Waiting until he could get back to work. Lack of sleep interfered with his work. It was getting difficult to sleep unless he physically wore himself out. And she was a lot more exhausting than running the obstacle course over at Fitness and Defense Tactics in the middle of the night.

--


End file.
